From Glenn Erickson’s longish review of the new 4K Bluray of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon, which streets today: “Babylon lives up to the crazy reports that accompanied its theatrical release last December — it’s a spectacular Hollywood history movie that ignores Hollywood history in favor of exaggerated orgies and drug use, as if Kenneth Anger’s bad gossip were just the tip of the scandal iceberg.

“In entertainment terms it’s a 188-minute gross-out that wants to be shocking but is mainly unpleasant. Anachronistic profanity is non-stop, but the dealbreaker comes in the very first scene with an enormous, diarrhetic elephant whose bodily eliminations rival Noah’s Flood. Margot Robbie is a dynamo and Brad Pitt as charming as ever, but the movie overall is ideal only for the curious and the masochistic.

“Babylon, in short, is oppressively off-putting, and no deep thought is required to explain why it wasn’t a hit. Word of mouth likely did the job, as most audiences would find it unpleasant at best and at worst intolerable. Personal tastes vary, but I know nobody who would think the movie’s excesses are entertaining. If I were to take a date to this picture, within three minutes I’d be telling the person, ‘it’s perfectly okay if you want to walk out right now.’ Babylon may do much better on disc and streaming than it did in theaters — a lot of moviegoers out there are curious.”

The HE community is encouraged to read Erickson’s entire essay.

Posted by yours truly on 11.17.22:

…and generally made to endure a lot of stress and anguish and emotional difficulty as a child, there wouldn’t a movie. So we know what this doc will be going in. Then again Shields is allegedly worth between $20 and $40 million as we speak, probably closer to the higher figure. So it all balances out.

If your wife/partner/lover is a writer and you’re in the difficult if not impossible position of (a) not admiring her writing all that much but (b) unable to share your honest opinion for obvious reasons…what the hell do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. Never share your honest opinion with her or anyone else…ever. Never write it down, never record it…observe Moscow rules.

That doesn’t just mean “keep it hidden until you die”; it means “keep it hidden eternally.” It’s the only way to go. Life with a wife/partner/lover is hard enough; naked honesty will just send the relationship into a ditch.

From Owen Gleiberman’s 1.22.23 Sundance review of Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings: “For close to half an hour, we have no idea where You Hurt My Feelings is going, and we don’t care. We’re happy just to spend time watching Nicole Holofcener’s people reveal themselves with an alternating current of savagery and vulnerability. But then, out of the blue, the film coalesces into a situation.

“At the Paragon Sports store near Union Square, Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her sister (Michaela Watkins) happen to walk in and see that Beth’s husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is there buying socks with Mark (Arian Moayed), his brother-in-law. They approach but stop short when they overhear what the two men are talking about. It’s Beth’s new novel. Don confesses that he didn’t actually like it. But he read so many drafts, and felt so committed to being encouraging, that he couldn’t bring himself to tell Beth what he really thought. Now he’s stuck in a lie he can’t get out of.

“This is not a matter of overpraising someone’s pot roast. Beth’s writing is part of her identity, her core. That Don didn’t like her book — and deceived her about it — cuts her to the quick. It’s almost as if he was being unfaithful, a point the film underscores by having Beth rush out of the store and come close to throwing up in the middle of a New York street, deliberately evoking Jill Clayburgh’s meltdown in An Unmarried Woman.

You know that the sound mix on Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal. 7.21) is probably going to be hellish, certainly to some extent. It’s going to be a bear, you know this, and yet you’ve been avoiding the act of thinking about it, or more honestly dreading it. You know what’s coming.

There’s only one fulfilling way to watch a Nolan film these days, and that’s at home with subtitles. I truly wish this were otherwise.

…is to sit there and take it. Man up and take it because you need to face your guilt and complicity. Deep down you know who and what you are, and the sooner you accept this…

Congratulations Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi! You did it!✊🏿◼️ pic.twitter.com/TO2KkmvCAt

— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) March 21, 2023

I‘ve always hated guys who wear burgundy or maroon-colored suit jackets. Or burgundy–maroon anything, for that matter.

I’m assuming that the alleged Star Wars: Skeleton Crew gig is a harmless paycheck thing…money to cover expenses while they assemble their next auteur-level annoyance.

Because of the always-urgent need for presentism by way of diverse casting, the forthcoming Tom Jones miniseries (PBS, 4.30) is going with a beautiful woman of color as Sophia, the main romantic interest of Solly McLeod‘s titular lead character. And that’s fine because Sophie Wilde is drop-dead dishy + well spoken.

In Tony Richardson’s same-titled 1963 farce, which closely followed Henry Fielding‘s 1749 novel, Wilde’s character was called Sophie Western and played by Susannah York. The blonde and beautiful Sophie was the daughter of Squire Western (Hugh Griffith) and the niece of the elderly Miss Western (Edith Evans).

In the new miniseries Alun Armstrong plays Squire Western, and Shirley Henderson plays Aunt Western.

Dont ask me to explain anything — I just work here.

The other “off” aspect is McLeod’s way-too-short hair. Men of the mid 18th Century wore their hair long or certainly longish as a rule.

Some folks appear to be having trouble with how things work. When Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams said that white people “need to get the hell away from Black people,” it was entirely hateful and racist. (And it was, not to mention stupid of Adams to blurt this out.) But when White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo said “I think people of color need to get away from white people,” it was cool or, you know, not a problem.

And if you, the reader, don’t understand this system, you’ve got a problem. Not DiAngelo or Adams…you.

“I think people of color need to get away from white people.”

“White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo, sounding a lot like Scott Adams. pic.twitter.com/RHV4EMOVpY

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) March 19, 2023

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